A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
The present invention relates generally to the testing and generation of signals that may vary over time.
Java Management Extensions (JMX) define a community process standard for managing resources and remotely accessible agents. JMX is a trademark of Sun Microsystems. Inc. JMX defines an architecture for network and/or application management in the Java programming language, as well as design patterns, services, and APIs. JMX utilizes the standard industry model Managed Beans, or MBeans, for use in Java programs and management applications. MBeans are Java objects that implement application resources. These MBeans may be managed by a JMX agent or other agent supporting the MBean concept. A set of complimentary services is typically specified, which work with these MBeans to monitor and manage Java-based applications. A monitoring Mbean, or JMX monitor, may be dynamically loaded by an application, and may send an event or notification when the component or parameter being monitored reaches a certain value or state.
JMX monitors typically detect and monitor signals that vary over time, functioning similar to a digital sampling oscilloscope. When developing these monitors, it is desirable to be able to test not only for accuracy, but also for stress and load capabilities. Digital signal generators of the prior art are typically used in the analog realm, and lack the necessary JMS format capabilities needed to test these JMX monitors. These prior art signal generators also fail to generate unorthodox signals, such as a string of words.
It is therefore an object of the invention to develop a method and system for testing a JMX monitor that can run for an extended duration, allowing for controllable stress and load testing.
The present invention includes a system for testing signal monitors, such as JMX monitors. The system utilizes a generator bean to generate a signal. A user may specify an equation and/or parameters to be used in generating an appropriate signal. A monitor bean is used to monitor the signal being generated. A notification is created by an MBean in response to the monitoring, such as may notify a user or application that the signal has reached a certain value, or may store the current value to a data store.
Also included in the present invention is a method for testing a JMX monitor. In the method, a signal is generated using a generator bean, such as a signal generator Java MBean. Equations and/or parameters may be specified in determining the type of signal to be generated. The generator bean is then polled at a frequency at least twice the frequency of the generated signal using a monitor MBean of the JMX monitor. A testing value is then returned for each polling of the generator bean.